Larry Ellison reveals the $1B management wall that forced Oracle to replace almost its entire leadership team. "We hit a wall." "We reached a billion dollars in revenue." "The people who were running a billion dollar company were the same people that would run the company when we were... a $50 million company." "I had an incredible sense of loyalty to those people." "The company had outgrown the management." "Virtually the entire management team had to be replaced." "I had to ask people who I'd worked with for a decade to leave." "Either I had to ask them to leave Oracle, or everyone would have to leave Oracle." The concept is the scale ceiling: the team that gets you from 0 to $50M is not automatically the team that gets you through $1B. Loyalty matters, but the organization eventually needs the next level of judgment. - Larry Ellison in a 1997 interviewshow more

Incredible sense of loyalty???

Understandable, but why didn’t he include himself then, wasn’t he as much part of the problem?

Some truth to this but getting rid of so much experience and company knowledge is risky

I know this on a much smaller scale

@grok what skills could he be talking about that’s different?

"I had an incredible sense of loyalty to those people."

I just looked back and Oracle has repeatedly hit walls of YoY revenue growth much much worse than a brief slow down in growth between 1990 and 1992 when revenue was growing through $1B. I have been using Oracle databases for over 25 years. They have built some great products over the years, but sometimes they just milk what they have and grow through acquisition. Fine. They are still around unlike many companies, but it seems like revisionist history to say they hit a wall at a billion in revenue. What about all the other years they had actual revenue declines?

"I had an incredible sense of loyalty to those people." - Liar.

But there are one or two in that group who had the vision you didn't have and could scale to infinity. They get thrown out with the bathwater. Then the accountants and consultants come in. Let's be honest that line he drew keeps the stock market happy.

Growth changes the game. The team that builds the company must evolve with the company.

So true

We see this constantly. Founders rarely want to run process. When did you face this?

So true I find it’s more fun to be the guys that get kicked out after you scale it. There is a level of dog needed in the beginning that is no longer present when it gets corporate Then it’s systems and processes. Small changes make big impacts that have to go through 5 layers of people Nah

Snake

Training was a thing back then, right?

What? It makes no sense!

And why is he still alive?

I know affordability one thing but does principles change because the target had been reached?

When this happened in Acrimony and he needed a new wife it was wrong lol, Black man always gone get judged smdh

The EQ dimension Ellison missed: the leaders who couldn't scale weren't bad — they had the wrong psychological profile for the next stage. 0→$50M rewards hustle and loyalty. $50M→$1B requires systems thinking and comfort with ambiguity. Different traits, not better ones.

Larry has been praised by Elon as an me of the the most intelligent persons he knows. I am getting on his company for the AI boom.

Or they had too much equity

The scale ceiling is real. The team that builds the foundation isn't always the one to scale it. Hard lesson but so important!

Thanks for sharing, a small story but I can learn a lot to build my team

ellisons billion dollar wall story shows even legendary leadership teams age out of the job that made them successful.

THATS COP OUT BULLSHIT THE FURST $50 MILLION IS THE HARDEST

Used to work for an outfit which had hit that wall Worst was the finance team, Infested with people who had been around for ages, many never worked anywhere else Parochial low talent blockers whose sense of self importance was grotesque The clear out was brutal but essential

The quote is real, straight from Larry Ellison’s own words. The year attached to it and the number attached to it are both wrong, and the real numbers make the gap worse than the post let on. Full details…..​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

yass

The hardest part of that wall wasn’t the org chart. It was admitting that loyalty and judgment are two different currencies, and a decade of one doesn’t buy you a single day of the other.

Old news. Like seriously old news.

he's coaching and he cares

it's the natural state of things. except you try to give them a chance to, might take longer tho.